Friday, December 20, 2013

I have a piece up today at Brain, Child magazine, the closing piece for their "What Is Family?" series for the holidays, about my childhood vacations with my extended family at the beach. You can check it out here!

"They were always smiling, my aunts and my uncles. The years seemed to
drop away from them at The Beach. They have all grown wrinkles and
bellies and gray hair with age, but still when they smile I am
transported back to the eternal summer of The Beach. At The Beach they
were children, teenagers. Uncle Dick knew the best way to dig a hole in
the sand. Uncle Bob told the same joke over and over—and we always fell
for it. Aunt Ellen would nearly always give in, with a look of
disapproval that was never effective because her eyes were twinkling,
when we teased her for an extra donut hole. And my mother seemed like a
girl, laughing and teasing, more carefree than she ever seemed at home."

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

I've posted two short essays, one about creating a landscape in our backyard to encourage children's imagination and curiosity about the natural world, and one about playing a preschool version of D&D and its educational advantages. They are linked in the "pages" section on the left.